The ongoing effort to steal the 2020 election keeps leaking details

Reporters at Talking Points Memo scoured the records of the transcripts from phone calls to and from Trump’s Chief of Staff in the period from the 2020 election to President Biden’s inauguration. Meadows released them to the January 6 Committee, but retained some under a claim of executive privilege.

The TPM journalists reviewed them, verified what phones most of them came from and were directed to. They also reached out to all the parties involved in the calls. Some replied. Some chose not to.

Their long effort provides a lot of insight into the key players, showing who was pushing what strategies or operating based on conspiracy theories. Their work, plus the Committee’s report (due within a week) are likely to be the last we get to see before the new Republican House majority takes over in January and ends the investigation. Then it’ll be up to Special counsel Jack Smith to continue the DOJ’s grand jury investigation to determine what charges will be filed against which parties.

Here’s an introductory overview of the TPM reporters’ work.

Here’s part 2: At least 34 members of Congress sent at least 364 calls to Mark Meadows. Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller was also calling. It appears that Rep. Mo Brooks - AL was a leader of one effort keying in on a 2005 report on non-citizen voting by Jimmy Carter and James Baker III. It was quite a stretch to make that case without any actual evidence. Rep Brian Babin - TX was comparing Biden’s win to a laughable claim of a Marxist takeover. And Senator Mike Lee - UT met with about a dozen Senators at the offices of a dark money group to plot legal strategies for contesting the election.

The Club For Growth was another organization involved. Rep Paul Gosar - AZ was pushing claims that originated from Alex Jones’ Infowars and other dubious sources.
Rep Jody Hice - GA led the effort to overturn the Georgia results.

Rep Jim Jordan -OH began pushing the plan to get VP Pence to refuse to certify the election. Brooks, Babin, Lee, Gosar, Hice, Jordan and Senator Ted Cruz - TX appeared to be the loudest leaders in these efforts based on the TPM reports.

Part 3: Rep Scott Perry - PA began an effort to get a national cyber team busy locking up voting machines in multiple states and may have been the most frequent Meadows’ caller. He was pushing the hacked voting machines claim hardest and was also key to drawing in several of the questionable attorneys challenging the results. And he was pushing hard to get Trump to name Jeffrey Clark as the US Attorney General, which only fell apart because numerous DOJ officials made it clear they’d resign in protest.

Part 4: Representative Andy Biggs - AZ was advancing the fake electors scheme and may have been Mark Meadows’ most frequent caller. He tried to get the AZ governor and AG involved and failed. As that scheme began unraveling, he began pursuing the faulty Dominion voting machine theory, then another, claiming illegal immigrants had illegally voted.

These four reports were released yesterday and there’s more to come. It clearly shows that Trump wasn’t just following fringe conspiracy sites but was being fed a steady diet of loopy ideas, conspiracies and strategies by elected officials and the donors of dark money groups. It also displays evidence of people who may be indicted and also why some of Trump’s most active remora (Jordan, Greene, etc) felt it necessary to ask for pardons.

Update: as a side note, it’s possible that Mark Meadows might get prosecuted for voter fraud in North Carolina, per the news today.

Note: Today, Rep Norman - SC responded to the TPM investigation, specifically his call for Trump to invoke martial law (which was misspelled as marshall law):

“Obviously, Martial Law was never warranted,” Norman said in a statement to local South Carolina outlet The State. “That text message came from a source of frustration, on the heels of countless unanswered questions about the integrity of the 2020 election, without any way to slow down and examine those issues prior to the inauguration of the newly elected president.”

It’s a pretty lame excuse. There was nothing extraordinary about the 2020 presidential election except for lots of Trump cultists making bullshit claims and the strange ex-president amplifying them and making groundless claims of his own.

US citizens don’t ever want to see martial law invoked for bullshit like this. but Norman will pay no price for acting like a stupid ninny.

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Gotta commend his efforts to make Twitter a safe space for neo-Nazis, hate groups and wacky conspiracy theorists, and now Q-Elon Musk keeps turning against people on his team that supported him.

On twitter now, it’s being reported that new studies indicate ivermectin actually is effective treating covid. Trump supporters are crowing that the CDC and liberals were wrong. But there are no new studies that say that. Twitter’s free speech policy let’s them say that anyway. Fun!

I’m starting to get the impression that his former reputation as a Brainiac might be off just a tad.

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In addition to Post as the leading contender as an alternative to Twitter, there’s another scheduled to come online on January 31st, called Spoutible.

This is their stated aim:

Spoutible's mission is to change how social media platforms have operated for over 20 years.

1. The percentage of the female population in the United States is 50.52% compared to 49.48% of the male population. However, women only hold 26.7% of technology jobs. We would start with a diverse team, and the goal would be at least 40% women. For Spoutible to be successful and tackle the issue plaguing every platform, it must start with diversity. Women, people of color, disabled people, and the LGBTQ+ community will play significant roles in shaping the direction of Spoutible.

2. We will never sell our users' personal data, period. We believe selling users' personal data should be prohibited by law, and Spoutible will have a legally binding agreement with our users stipulating we will never sell their personal data.

3. We will prohibit targeted harassment, single-purpose hate accounts, and accounts spreading disinformation on the platform. The days of being swarmed by toxic trolls and flooding platforms with falsehoods are over.

4. Attacking people based on their skin color, who they choose to love, their gender, or what god they worship would be strictly prohibited. The rules will be clear and enforced.

5. We will build better tools to protect our users, and they will be available on day one.

6. When we suspend a person on Spoutible, they will not be allowed to return to continue causing havoc. Permanently suspended means permanently suspended.

Spoutible link.

Post link.

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The nation’s least popular governor is departing with actions that will drop her popularity further, doing her best to eliminate the death penalty. Yes, the people leaving death row committed horrific and shocking crimes. The families affected are mostly going to be pissed. But as an opponent of the death penalty, I just don’t think government’s should be in the business of killing criminals. Death penalty countries always kill in inequitable ways, targeting minorities, the poor and there’s always been innocents put to death due to wrongful convictions.

And lest any think life incarceration is a nice getaway, there’s a whole ‘nuther seamy side to that: the abuse and sexual abuse of prisoners.

We have a justice concept in this country, a ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Even though I hear many Americans who believe criminals - no matter the severity of the crime - deserve to be punished harshly and perpetually.

I consider those holding such opinions to be no better than the criminals they condemn.

And there is no excuse for any US prison to permit abuses like these to occur. Hiring, screening and cameras can end this predatory behavior, unlike many decades past. The federal prison system has to take the lead here because some states are filled with lots of terrible people who just don’t care. And the only way they’ll ever reform their prisons is if the feds and most other states decide to end the abuses.

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Tommy and Dick are in their mid 80s now, but it’s nice to stroll down memory lane again.